Our Holidays. VariousЧитать онлайн книгу.

      And ever when a louder blast

      Shook beam and rafter as it passed,

      The merrier up its roaring draught

      The great throat of the chimney laughed.

      The house-dog on his paws outspread,

      Laid to the fire his drowsy head;

      The cat's dark silhouette on the wall

      A couchant tiger's seemed to fall,

      And for the winter fireside meet

      Between the andiron's straddling feet

      The mug of cider simmered slow,

      The apples sputtered in a row,

      And close at hand the basket stood

      With nuts from brown October's wood."

      For a picture of the poet himself we must turn to the verses in "The Barefoot Boy," in which he says:

      I doubt if any boy ever rose to intellectual eminence who had fewer opportunities for education than Whittier. He had no such pasturage to browse on as is open to every reader who, by simply reaching them out, can lay his hands on the treasures of English literature. He had to borrow books wherever they could be found among the neighbors who were willing to lend, and he thought nothing of walking several miles for one volume. The only instruction he received was at the district school, which was open a few weeks in midwinter, and at the Haverhill Academy, which he attended two terms of six months each, paying tuition by work in spare hours, and by keeping a small school himself. A feeble spirit would have languished under such disadvantages. But Whittier scarcely refers to them, and instead of begging for pity, he takes them as part of the common lot, and seems to remember only what was beautiful and good in his early life.